Sand
by penny dreadfully
Summary: OneShot ROB/TERRA A small moment in twilight. Terra sees everyone in relation to the earth, but what is Robin? The writer challenge


**Disclaimer****: I do not own the Teen Titans**

I was thinking of Terra one night.

I don't know why, I don't have any particular emotional attachment to her character. But everybody loves a metaphor. How would Terra think? She would relate everyone around her to the one thing she was connected to, that she understood. She would think of them in terms of the Earth. Starfire was a diamond, a gem blazing with internal fire. Cyborg was marble perhaps, strong, solid, polished. Raven was…obsidian- a black so deep it held only secrets, sharp and reflective. BeastBoy was granite, rough around the edges but porous enough to soak up the sun. But what was Robin? Robin was like sand...

--

Terra let the sand sift through her fingers. She didn't necessarily like sand. It was difficult to work with, hard to control. It was slippery, constantly blowing out of her grasp, always changing, blowing, shifting...It was a struggle to maintain contact with each minute pebble, to herd it into the curtain of a dust-cloud or the swirling fury of a dirt devil. Still, it was a powerful weapon when she could maintain control. That damn control.

The ocean turned the dust coating her boots to mud, lapping with the motion of the ages, an endless dance with a partner it could never touch. "Ahh, fair moon, you are too far, too high, and though you do both wax and wane for me, we are no closer to the soft caress of love than when fair maiden began her journey across the lonely skies"

"But still, gentle ocean, you do naught but follow me, remind me daily of you devotion with each heaving sigh upon the sand."

Terra startled to have someone enter upon her game so lightly.

"I didn't take you for the poetic type"

"The mind will find all sorts of ways to amuse itself when left to its own devices."

Robin sat beside her in the unsteady sand. There was no moon out to justify their verse. It was the time of twilight, when light finally crept into the smallest nooks it could not find throughout the day and shadows came to soften the loss of light. Robin faced towards the setting sun. The dark ebony of his hair soaking in the nighttime, his iridescent mask reflecting back the sun.

Terra let her fingertips trace across the sand, witting nonsense words that would be washed away within an hour. Unconsoled her hands searched for a pebble, a shell, anything more solid than this parched, swirling liquid that would always drift away from her the moment her mind relaxed. Her fingers moved in wider and wider circles finding nothing but the minute crystals of herself. Dancing as they did her fingers eventually ran into something solid, the rather ridiculous green gloves of a certain Boy Wonder.

Robin didn't shift at the contact, merely turned his face from the sleeping sun. He found a face in shadow. The heavy curtain of sun-bleached blond had fallen from behind her ear, as it so often did, cloaking her eyes, her smile, from the last drops of vanishing light. Robin felt no desire to arrange her locks, to try and tame its wild nature. Some things existed just as they were and there was little that could be done to change them. These were not proper thoughts for a hero.

There is always a line. Good on one side, bad on the other. Righteous intent and ill purpose. Day and night. But there is always a transition, the space in time then a person hovers over that line, foot lifted but uncertain where to set it down. Today gave time for action, Tonight left room for thought. Here, in the dim between day and night, things can become muddled enough that they finally make sense. A rock can be worn away by wind and rain and time until it is but a whisper of dust across a cheek. But someday those tiny bits of stone will find themselves washed upon some distant shore to be cemented and baked and pressed together by the very elements that tore it apart.

The last of a dying sun was reflected across his eyes. Terra watched it there. She did not want to turn her head, to see the reality unfold. She wished to see it softened and warmed, touched by his face. Such a silly pretence, that mask. No one could ever look in, only see as he saw, reflected and distorted. Yet in the end everything the other saw was _through his eyes._ Terra looked away when he shifted slightly, the image she saw became that of herself, shrouded in darkness.

There. Her fingers latched upon a decent sized pebble, smooth but oblong. She reveled in it, the weight, the solidity. This was real. This was hers to control and manipulate. For some reason she found herself thinking of Beast Boy. He was real. He was solid. There weren't too many layers to sift through, heavy sediments to be sorted and dealt with before she could close her mind around it. He just was. He was steady and warm, granite baking in the midday sun.

There was no midday sun. Just She and Robin in the sifting shadows on the sifting sand. He did not smile. She did not cry. They breathed together. Their hands clasped but only through gloves. So many layers, so many barriers. But it was protection. Gloves, masks, capes, they were necessary in their world. A world where naked lips could touch but never naked eyes. Too many secrets stayed in a person's eyes. Better to but a layer between a soul and the world. And still a hand will search; the eyes will look, seeking past the layers as they bury themselves further behind their own.

Robin would let her keep her shadows. Terra would let him keep his mask. And the sand would trickle through her fingers.

--

I am rather proud of this. Please tell me what you think.


End file.
